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Introduction

This book was written to mark the 250th anniversary in 2009 of the birth of Robert Burns, the Ploughman Poet, whose words captured the spirit of the Scottish nation. His anniversary year has been declared Scotland’s Homecoming Year, which aims to encourage Scots all over the world to come back to visit, and to assure them of a warm welcome when they do.

To come home you need to know where you come from. Underpinning Homecoming Year is genealogy, the study of family trees or pedigrees, and its associated discipline of family history, the study of the stories behind the pedigrees. In many countries, computerization of records has rocketed genealogy from a minority interest into an immensely popular obsession. But in Scotland, knowing your roots is nothing new. Right back in the sixteenth century, the French joked of any Scotsman they encountered ‘that man is the cousin of the king of the Scots’, for that was what he would surely claim. A rather more cynical view was penned in the mid-eighteenth century by Charles Churchill (1731-64), in his ‘Prophecy of Famine’: ‘Two boys, whose birth beyond all question springs From great and glorious, tho’ forgotten kings, Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred On the same bleak and barren mountain’s head…’

With a population of just over five million, there are many parts of Scotland where the ubiquitous sheep are more easily found than people.

Sarcastic, yes, but accurate, for many of the widespread Lowland families and Highland clans were indeed founded by scions of Scotland’s ruling dynasties, be they in origin Pict, Briton, Gael, Viking or Norman. And such knowledge was not lost, especially in the Gaelic-speaking parts, when ancestors’ names were remembered through the sloinneadh, the patronymic or pedigree, in which two or more – often many – generations of ancestors’ names were recited, and which was a natural part of everyone’s sense of identity.

Such essential knowledge was threatened, diluted, and sometimes lost by migration, whether to other parts of Scotland or over the seas in the white-sailed ships. Nonetheless, it results today in many people all over the world being able to point at a particular spot on the map of Scotland and say, ‘that is home’.

This book is for those who can’t, but want to, or who can but want to learn more. I know that many aspects of genealogy such as DNA and nonconformity can seem terribly complicated, and that some specific aspects of Scottish genealogy (such as services of heirs, wadsets and precepts of clare constat) seem to have been designed purposely to intimidate the faint-hearted. And, given the great amount of contradictory information flying about, does your Scottish surname actually indicate that you belong to a clan, or may wear a tartan, or doesn’t it?

I hope this book will help guide you through these issues, to develop a much fuller understanding of your Scottish family history, and to find your own way back, so to speak, to your Scottish home.

Abbreviations

FHC	Mormon Family History Centres
GROS	General Register Office of Scotland
NAS	National Archives of Scotland
NLS	National Library of Scotland
NRAS	National Register of Archives of Scotland
SGS	Scottish Genealogy Society
SHS	Scottish History Society
SoG	Society of Genealogists (London)
SRS	Scottish Record Society
TNA	The National Archives (Kew, London)

Future meets past: old Ally Alistair MacLeod was a Highland crofter, descended from Viking chieftains. His tiny granddaughter Moira Hooks was born after her mother (whose sister is shown here) had moved away to Glasgow. Now she and her descendants all live in England. This picture captures the only time they ever met (courtesy of the MacLeod Family Collection).

Old family photographs provide the perfect backdrop to your research, helping bring the past to life.